Category Archives: Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the largest contiguous country on the European continent. Ukraine borders the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south and southeast, respectively.
Ukrainian Oligarch Paid $700,000 To The Husband Of A House Judiciary Committee Democrat
December 16, 2019 By Chrissy Clark
Robert Powell, the husband of Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., reportedly took $700,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch named Igor Kolomoisky. Mucarsel-Powell sits on the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that drafted two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump for his alleged abuse of power with regards to Ukraine.
In 2018, the Daily Beast reported that a number of businesses linked to Kolomoisky hired Powell as an attorney. One of those firms paid Powell at least $700,000 over two years, according to public records.
The Miami Herald reported Powell was working for companies tied to Kolomoisky for 10 years. Powell made most of his money in the two years leading up to his wife’s election in 2018.
Kolomoisky has been accused of contract killings and embezzlement in the past. Yet, in 2018 when Mucarsel-Powell was running for her seat, she did not see her husband’s work as relevant to her campaign.
“Debbie Mucrasel-Powell is running for Congress, not her husband. To imply that Debbie has anything to do with her indirect shareholder of a parent company that once employed her husband is an enormous stretch,” said Michael Hernandez, senior communications advisor for her campaign in 2018.
While Mucrasel-Powell may have convinced her constituents that her husband’s work is unrelated, it is a clear conflict in the current impeachment of Trump. Mucarsel-Powell voted to impeach Trump.
The House has moved to impeach Trump over a July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. When the House initiated impeachment hearings, they were arguing Trump asked for a quid pro quo or potentially bribed the Ukrainian president. No evidence to corroborate those charges has been found, so now the House is charging the president with abuse of power and obstructing Congress in relation to the Ukrainian phone call.
And yet, no Democrats see a problem with one of their own committee members’ spouses doing business with a Ukrainian ogliarch. There has been no check on whether Mucrasel-Powell is benefitting from her husband’s work with a foreign power that interfered in the 2016 election.
There is a double standard in Mucrasel-Powell’s ability to impeach the President for his work in Ukraine, simultaneously, allowing her husband to earn money from Kolomoisky, a thug from the same foreign power.
Chrissy Clark is a staff writer at The Federalist. Follow her on social media @chrissyclark_ or contact her at chrissy@thefederalist.com.
DOH! Did You Know There’s a Treaty Between the USA & Ukraine Regarding Cooperation For Prosecuting Crimes?
Posted on September 25, 2019 by DCWhispers
My goodness. It was passed when Joe Biden was a member of the U.S. Senate and then signed by then-President Bill Clinton.
A comprehensive treaty agreement that allows cooperation between both the United States and Ukraine in the investigation and prosecution of crimes.
It appears President Trump was following the law to the letter when it comes to unearthing the long-standing corruption that has swirled in Ukraine and allegedly involves powerful Democrats like Joe Biden and others.
“To the Senate of the United States: With a view to receiving the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, I transmit herewith the Treaty Between the United States of America and Ukraine on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters with Annex, signed at Kiev on July 22, 1998. I transmit also, for the information of the Senate, an exchange of notes which was signed on September 30, 1999, which provides for its provisional application, as well as the report of the Department of State with respect to the Treaty. The Treaty is one of a series of modern mutual legal assistance treaties being negotiated by the United States in order to counter criminal activities more effectively. The Treaty should be an effective tool to assist in the prosecution of a wide variety of crimes, including drug trafficking offenses. The Treaty is self-executing. It provides for a broad range of cooperation in criminal matters. Mutual assistance available under the Treaty includes: taking of testimony or statements of persons; providing documents, records, and articles of evidence; serving documents; locating or identifying persons; transferring persons in custody for testimony or other purposes; executing requests for searches and seizures; assisting in proceedings related to restraint, confiscation, forfeiture of assets, restitution, and collection of fines; and any other form of assistance not prohibited by the laws of the requested state. I recommend that the Senate give early and favorable consideration to the Treaty and give its advice and consent to ratification.”
WILLIAM J. CLINTON.
https://www.congress.gov/106/cdoc/tdoc16/CDOC-106tdoc16.pdf
Giuliani Hits Bidens With New $3 Million “Ukraine-Latvia-Cyprus” Money Laundering Accusation
by Tyler Durden Mon, 09/23/2019 – 10:05
Rudy Giuliani leveled serious new claims at the Bidens in a series of Monday morning tweets. Chief among them is a claim that $3 million was laundered to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, via a “Ukraine-Latvia-Cyprus-US” route – a revelation he claims was “kept from you by Swamp Media.” by Tyler Durden Mon, 09/23/2019 – 10:05
Trump’s personal attorney then mentioned China – where journalist Peter Schweizer reported Joe and Hunter Biden flew in 2013 on Air Force Two. Two weeks later, Hunter’s firm inked a private equity deal for $1 billion with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China, which expanded to $1.5 billion, according to an article by Schweizer’s in the New York Post.
Giuliani then went on to tweet that the Bidens lied about not discussing Hunter’s overseas business.
On Saturday, Joe Biden said he “never” spoke with Hunter about the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter sat on the board of while being paid $50,000 per month. As you’re doubtless aware by now, the elder Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees from Ukraine if they didn’t fire the investigator probing the company, Burisma.
Hunter, however,admitted in July that the two did speak about his Ukraine business “just once,” telling the New Yorker “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do’“
Rudy then lashed out at the Democratic party, which he said would “own” Biden’s scandals if hey don’t “call for investigation of Bidens’ millions from Ukraine and billions from China.”
Here’s what we know about Hunter’s dealings in China based on Schweizer’s reporting via our May report:
- Hunter Biden and his partners created several LLCs involved in multibillion-dollar private equity deals with Chinese government-owned entities.
- The primary operation was Rosemont Seneca Partners – an investment firm founded in 2009 and controlled by Hunter Biden, John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz, and Heniz’s longtime associate Devon Archer. The trio began making deals “through a series of overlapping entities” under Rosemont.
- In less than a year, Hunter Biden and Archer met with top Chinese officials in China, and partnered with the Thornton Group – a Massachusetts-based consultancy headed by James Bulger –
sonnephew of famed mob hitman James “Whitey” Bulger (h/t @Guerrilla_Magoo for the correction). - According to the Thornton Group’s Chinese-language website, Chinese executives “extended their warm welcome” to the “Thornton Group, with its US partner Rosemont Seneca chairman Hunter Biden (second son of the now Vice President Joe Biden.”
- Officially, the China meets were to “explore the possibility of commercial cooperation and opportunity,” however details of the meeting were not published to the English-language version of the website.
- “The timing of this meeting was also notable. It occurred just hours before Hunter Biden’s father, the vice president, met with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington as part of the Nuclear Security Summit,” according to Schweizer.
- Perhaps most damning in terms of timing and optics, just twelve days after Hunter and Joe Biden flew on Air Force Two to Beijing, Hunter’s company signed a “historic deal with the Bank of China,” described by Schweizer as “the state-owned financial behemoth often used as a tool of the Chinese government.” To accommodate the deal, the Bank of China created a unique type of investment fund called Bohai Harvest RST (BHR). According to BHR, Rosemont Seneca Partners is a founding partner.
It was an unprecedented arrangement: the government of one of America’s fiercest competitors going into business with the son of one of America’s most powerful decisionmakers.
Chris Heinz claims neither he nor Rosemont Seneca Partners, the firm he had part ownership of, had any role in the deal with Bohai Harvest. Nonetheless, Biden, Archer and the Rosemont name became increasingly involved with China. Archer became the vice chairman of Bohai Harvest, helping oversee some of the fund’s investments. –New York Post
And while Hunter Biden had “no experience in China, and little in private equity,” the Chinese government for some reason thought it would be a great idea to give his firm business opportunities instead of established global banks such as Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs.
Also in December 2014, a Chinese state-backed conglomerate called Gemini Investments Limited was negotiating and sealing deals with Hunter Biden’s Rosemont on several fronts. That month, it made a $34 million investment into a fund managed by Rosemont.
The following August, Rosemont Realty, another sister company of Rosemont Seneca, announced that Gemini Investments was buying a 75 percent stake in the company. The terms of the deal included a $3 billion commitment from the Chinese, who were eager to purchase new US properties. Shortly after the sale, Rosemont Realty was rechristened Gemini Rosemont.
Chinese executives lauded the deal. –New York Post
“Rosemont, with its comprehensive real-estate platform and superior performance history, was precisely the investment opportunity Gemini Investments was looking for in order to invest in the US real estate market,” said Li Ming, chairman of Sino-Ocean Land Holdings Limited and Gemini Investments. “We look forward to a strong and successful partnership.“
Three years later,a crack pipe, two DC driver’s licenses and other paraphenelia would be found in a rental car Hunter Biden returned to an Arizona Hertz location in the middle of the night.
The morning after the car was dropped off, a phone number belonging to a renowned local “Colon Hydrotherapist” called the Hertz. The caller identified himself as “Joseph McGee,” who told the employees that the keys were located in the gas cap as opposed to the drop box.
Amazing how so many countries would scramble to do business with Hunter – a guy with virtually no experience who was discharged from the Navy after testing positive for cocaine – who just happened to be the Vice President’s son.
Clinton’s Charity Ties With Oligarchs Behind Ukrainian Coup Revealed
Sputnik 23 March 2015
A sinister atmosphere surrounds the Clinton Foundation’s role in Ukrainian military coup of February 2014, experts point out.It has recently turned out that Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, a vocal proponent of Ukraine’s European integration, made huge contributions to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton was the US Secretary of State. Although the foundation swore off donations from foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton was serving as a state official, it continued accepting money from private donors. Many of them had certain ties to their national governments like Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian businessman and ex-parliamentarian.
Remarkably, among individual donors contributing to the Clinton Foundation in the period between 1999 and 2014, Ukrainian sponsors took first place in the list, providing the charity with almost $10 million and pushing England and Saudi Arabia to second and third places respectively.
It is worth mentioning that the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation alone transferred at least $8.6 million to the Clinton charity between 2009 and 2013. Pinchuk, who acquired his fortune from a pipe-making business, served twice as a parliamentarian in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada and was married to the daughter of ex-president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.
Although the Clinton’s charity denies that the donations were somehow connected with political matters, experts doubt that international private sponsors received no political support in return. In 2008 Pinchuk pledged to make a five-year $29 million contribution to the Clinton Global Initiative in order to fund a program aimed at training future Ukrainian leaders and “modernizers.” Remarkably, several alumni of these courses are current members of Ukrainian parliament. Because of the global financial crisis, the Pinchuk Foundation sent only $1.8 million.
Experts note that during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, Viktor Pinchuk was introduced to some influential American lobbyists. Curiously enough, he tried to use his powerful “friends” to pressure Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych to free Yulia Tymoshenko, who served a jail term.Viktor Pinchuk has always been one of the most vocal proponents of Ukraine’s European integration. In 2004 Pinchuk founded the Yalta European Strategy (YES) platform in Kiev. YES is led by the board including ex-president of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. According to the website of the platform, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Kofi Annan, Radoslaw Sikorski, Vitaliy Klitschko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Petro Poroshenko and other prominent figures have participated in annual meetings of YES since 2004.
No one would argue that proponents of Ukraine’s pro-Western course played the main role in organizing the coup of February 2014 in Kiev. Furthermore, the exceptional role of the United States in ousting then-president Viktor Yanukovich has also been recognized by political analysts, participants of Euromaidan and even by Barack Obama, the US President.
Experts note that after the coup, the Ukrainian leadership has actually become Washington’s puppet government. Several foreign citizens, including American civilian Natalie Jaresko, Lithuanian investment banker Aivaras Abromavicius and Georgia-born Alexander Kvitashvili have assumed high posts in the Ukrainian government. It should be noted that Natalie Jaresko, Ukraine’s Financial Minister, have previously worked in the US State Department and has also been linked to oligarch Viktor Pinchuk.
So far, experts note, the recent “game of thrones” in Ukraine has been apparently instigated by a few powerful clans of the US and Ukraine, who are evidently benefitting from the ongoing turmoil. In this light the Clinton Foundation looks like something more than just a charity: in today’s world of fraudulent oligopoly we are facing with global cronyism, experts point out, warning against its devastating consequences.
After Iraq, Libya, Iran now Russia wages Petrodollar War
April 29, 2014
The Ministry of Finance (MoF) on President Putin’s order yesterday accelerated the opening of the St. Petersburg Exchange (SPE), where prices for Russian oil and natural gas will be set in rubles instead of US dollars.
Putin’s order regarding the SPE was in direct response to the US placing sanctions yesterday upon Igor Sechin the CEO of the Russian energy giant Rosneft and a nominated board member of the SPE, and of which Deputy Minister for foreign relations, Sergey Ryabkov, had warned: “A response of Moscow will follow, and it will be painfully felt in Washington DC.”
Sechin, was directly threatened by the Obama regime earlier this month due to his October 2013 remarks at the World Energy Congress in Korea where he called for a “global mechanism to trade natural gas” and went on suggesting that “it was advisable to create an international exchange for the participating countries, where transactions could be registered with the use of regional currencies”.
Sechin, as one of the most influential leaders of the global energy trading community now has the perfect instrument to make this plan a reality with the SPE where reference prices for Russian oil and natural gas will be set in rubles instead of US dollars and could literally destroy the petrodollar.
As we reported earlier already Russia and India are planning to remove the Dollar, meanwhile many speculators believe that the Yuan may already have become a de facto reserve currency. Also to be noted is the epic $30 Billion Oil Pipeline undertaken by Russia, India, China that could shift the Geopolitical balance.
The use of this “Financial Nuclear Weapon” (the sale of oil in a currency other than the US dollar) which was previously deployed by Saddam Hussein, resulted in the total destruction of Iraq, but it failed to deter other countries angry with the highhandedness of the US.
Libya made another attempt and it resulted in the destruction of the country and the brutal murder of its leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Next was Iran. The US and the global financial war party found it much more difficult to isolate and annihilate Iran, even when it was threatened with outright nuclear attack by US and Israel. And in spite of unprecedented sanctions against Iran (which constitute economic warfare and are war crimes in itself), Iran stood defiant.
The leading members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Russia and China restrained themselves so as to preserve global stability.
However, the war party faction of the US took such restraint as weakness and went on a spree of regime change throughout the world to undermine the growing strength of BRICS.
The “straw that broke the camels’ back” was the unbridled and reckless coup against the elected President of Ukraine by US and NATO and orchestrated by the US State Department and led by the war-monger Victoria Nuland, who openly admitted that the US had disbursed through such organizations as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) over $5 Billion to facilitate the coup. Further to this just a couple of days back as reported by Bodhita US backed elite ‘Rape-Murder’ Alpha Squads were captured in Ukraine.
Critical to understand about the current Ukrainian Crisis, is that it has “absolutely nothing” at all to do with either Ukraine or its people, but should be understood for what it really is…a “sledgehammer” the US is attempting to use against Russia to prevent the opening and expansion of the SPE.
By perpetually expanding the US money supply, it’s important to note, America’s standard of living for its elite classes increases as well. The only problem with this situation is that the only way that it can be sustained is if the demand for the dollar and for US debt securities remains consistently strong.
Grasping this last point is extremely important. For if the artificial global US dollar demand, made possible by the petrodollar system, were ever to crumble, foreign nations who had formerly found it beneficial to hold US dollars would suddenly find that they no longer needed the massive amounts that they were holding.
This massive amount of dollars, which would no longer be useful to foreign nations, would come rushing back to their place of origin… America.
Obviously, an influx of dollars into the American economy would lead to massive inflationary pressures within their economic system and collapse it, along with that of the EU too.
It is difficult to overstate the importance of this concept as the entire American monetary system literally hinges on this “dollars for oil” system. Without it, Washington would lose its permission slip to print excessive numbers of dollars.
With thousands of NATO-backed Romanian troops now moving to the Ukraine border, along with British and French fighter jets now being deployed to Lithuania and Poland to join their recently arrived US military allies, it cannot be ruled out that the US will attempt to start a war with Russia in order to protect their petrodollar scheme.
In spite of the fact that all Russian military forces have returned to their permanent bases and Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu assured his US counterpart Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel yesterday during an hour long phone conversation that Russia had no intention of invading Ukraine, Moscow has become increasingly “alarmed” by the combined US-NATO military buildup on its borders that Minister Shoigu called “unprecedented”.
As for the Ukrainian people themselves being used as pawns by the US against Russia in this “petrodollar war”, their lives are quickly turning from despair to outright misery as they are forced to swallow the “bitter pill” being forced upon them by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which is forcing their fuel and energy costs to skyrocket and taxes being raised on everything from alcohol to tobacco, not to mention the tens-of-thousands of public jobs being made redundant (layoffs and firings) and the nearly 5% cut in payments to pensioners.
Even worse for these “US Pawns”, wages now in Ukraine are, as a rule, not enough to feed a family, and the devaluation of their currency will make it totally impossible for these people to absorb these costs.
It is critically important to note that back in 2008, when the US brought the world to the very brink of total economic collapse, then Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that Russia should seize opportunities created by the weak US dollar. “Today, the global economy is going through uneasy times,” he said. “The role of the key reserve currencies is under review. And we must take advantage of it.”
Six years later that is what Putin is doing…nobody can say that they weren’t warned.
Ukraine: Ulstein’s CSV Polar Onyx Launched
The hull of the offshore construction and well intervention vessel “Polar Onyx”, built by the order from Norwegian company Ulstein Hull AS, has been launched at Shipyard Zaliv on May 31, 2013.
The hull is currently moored alongside the outfitting berth of the Ukraine-based yard and is waiting to be towed to Norway to the place of final completion.
The high-capacity vessel is designed for operations in harsh conditions and deep waters, with a length of 130 meters and a 25 meter beam. The vessel is built to the highest standard for dynamic positioning, DP2+, and is equipped with a 250t AHC offshore crane. It is also equipped with a 275t Vertical Lay System above a moonpool which is capable of installing flexible pipe and umbilicals to 3,000m water depth.
The vessel has recently been chartered to Ceona Services (UK) for a period of 5 years and it will start working for Ceona immediately upon delivery from Ulstein Verft in the first quarter of 2014.
In total, during the six years of cooperation between Zaliv and Ulstein Hull AS, fourteen vessels have been built for work in the oil and gas industry.
Related:
Norway: Ulstein Launches New Platform Supply Vessel for Blue Ship Invest
Ulstein Group, a group of companies mainly known for its ship building and ship design activities reported today that the first platform supply vessel (PSV) newbuilding of the PX121 design from ULSTEIN®, M/V Blue Fighter, was named in a formal ceremony at Ulstein Verft, Norway on 12 January.
The vessel, 83.4 m of overall length, is the first of two PSVs of the new design under construction at Ulstein Verft for Blue Ship Invest, a shipping company in ULSTEIN. Blue Fighter’s sister vessel will be delivered in Q3 of 2012.
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Ukraine Postpones LNG Terminal Due to Funding Constraints
Ukraine has postponed the construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal due to a lack of funding, Ukrainian newspaper Kommersant Ukraine has reported.
The project, undertaken by national gas company Naftogaz Ukrainy, is planned to be constructed on the Black Sea. However, due to a lack of investor interest, the project has been delayed, the paper reports a source from Naftogaz Ukrainy as saying. The country will now concentrate on a cheaper low-power floating regasification plant, the paper says.
The country is now considering the possibility of renting a floating terminal for regasification of the LNG until funding can be secured to built a terminal of its own.
“Today we see the mechanisms to use the offshore LNG-terminal,” chairman of the Ukrainian National Project LNG body, Vitaliy Demianiuk said. “The term of preparation of this project is about 2 years. It will be used until a ground terminal is built.”
Ukraine has turned to alternative sources of gas as part of an effort to diversify supply from Russian supplier Gazprom. Spanish Socoin, a gas engineering company, has recently been tasked with completing a feasibility study on the LNG terminal.
Source: Kommersant
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